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The spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice. -- Sri Aurobindo (from the message broadcast on the eve of August 15, 1947)

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Though the Vedic literature is the largest of the ancient world by all accounts, Indian leftists will have no pride in it and seek to denigrate it as best they can. Though the Mahabharata at over two thousand years old is the world’s oldest and longest national epic, Indian leftists don’t even want it taught in the schools (even when the common people find great pride in watching the Mahabharata on television).

In this regard, we should remember that Marxism and communism in India are largely anti-national movements. Marxists in India sided with China against India during the Indo-Chinese war of 1962 and raised no criticism of China for its attack. They sided with the British during the independence movement. This is a stark contrast to communism in Russia, China and Vietnam in which were part of larger nationalistic movements. This is because Indian Marxists came mainly from a British Marxist background and did not participate in anti-colonial struggles, as did the followers of Mao and Ho-chi-minh. They were largely intellectuals from wealthy families, educated in England, not workers in the field, much less freedom fighters.

Actually the distortion of history has been done intentionally by many modern Indian historians, particularly covering over historical wrongs against Hindus. They believe that by correcting history that the present can be changed. They pretend that the generally cruel Muslim rule in India was benign and secular so that this account will serve to make modern Hindus and Muslims more benign and secular and help them bury the past. But the opposite is true. If a nation does not face its true history, it has no future and its present remains confused. This would be like American historians pretending that Native Americans (Red Indians) were treated well through history and that accounts of their oppression and genocide were false or exaggerated, so as to bring harmony to the two communities today. This would only allow old prejudices to continue...

Even Europe had its Dark Ages after the Roman period in which much knowledge was lost. This idea of history as linear progress is clearly not the case. While humanity has progressed scientifically, this is mainly over the past five hundred years. On the other hand, we see a spiritual decline since ancient times, and over the last century we can note a decline in culture, art, music and philosophy in Europe itself, coinciding or even caused by great advances in science.

As India is the only civilization of antiquity to survive the onslaught of time, it is the special responsibility of Indians to discover not only their history but also that of the entire ancient world. Just as there are unquestioned distortions of ancient India, similar distortions of other ancient cultures also exist. For example, the religion of ancient Egypt, which like that of the Vedas demonstrates much occult and spiritual significance, is similarly dismissed as polytheism, idolatry or henotheism (worshipping different Gods as the supreme God), exactly like the Vedas. Revamping the way history is taught in Indian schools would be a major step in the direction of a more authentic and spiritual sensitive history of the world. It is a scientific and spiritual imperative, not only for India but for all countries. <<><>12 3 456Next >End >>Book ListOnline BooksOnline ArticlesHome

The EU decrees no more bagpipe music; no more loud symphonies. There is a long list of foolishness put forth by this body which, in chaos theory, could be called a "strange attractor for neurotic people-pushers." I recall a few years ago the EU mandating the size and shape of bananas, and ordering window-washers to forgo the use of step-ladders.

All in all, this institutionalized satire on a dying system in a dying civilization reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's lovely story of "Harrison Bergeron," whose "Handicapper-General" established and enforced all sorts of burdens upon the practice of beauty, excellence, and creativity in a best-of-all-possible-worlds.

Gandhi was not able to prevent partition, and partition cost hundreds of thousands of lives. On some level (this is controversial) Gandhi managed to pacify and disarm the hindus but not the muslims. Muslims then attacked hindus, then hindus took revenge. Tragic really, the loss of life whatever the religion.Gandhi did not want to fight Hitler. Lets apply Gandhi to Iran. Iran will get nukes and then blackmail everyone. This could spark a world war with millions of deaths.Bushes "bomb iran approach" may cost thousands of lives. In the long run could prevent a major war.Note I have used words such as could or may since no one project into the future. Its a matter of judgement.Non-violence only works if both sides want it. Gandhi said "this could work on Hitler (non-violence) it could melt his heart". Aurobindo remark "it would need a furnace".

Co-authored with fellow Michigan professor MS Krishnan, the book, “The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks” published by Tata McGraw Hill chronicles the pioneers of the new age and derives lessons from them for others to emulate. The event in New Delhi was symbolic in many ways. Not only was the launch a global one for the professor guru who advises Fortune 500 leaders, but the case studies lined up in the tome also put Indian companies in the forefront.

What’s more, information technology that aids the new culture is a definitively Indian flavour. “It is a 180-degree turn from where the Industrial Revolution started,” Prahalad said.

Ford’s Model T epitomized the 20th Century one-size-fits-all assembly line. In the new scheme of things, such vertically integrated companies owning or controlling as many assets as possible are replaced by nimble players that draw upon a diverse variety of resources that are global in an equation the authors describe as R=G. The focus shifts from managing supply chain of vendors to a supply web of many. At the other end, every consumer is taken one at a time in an equation dubbed N=1.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

I was quite aghast at Arun Maira’s recent column entitled Let’s Revisit Capitalism. He quotes a former member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet and the former editor of the London Economist magazine as his authorities. And he suggests that western-style capitalism is unsuitable for China and India – for two reasons: the first is environmental (ho hum); and the second is the economic inequality that will result (ho hum once again).

Mercifully, he does not ask for more government intervention. He advises more corporate social responsibility kind of stuff. Yet, the article must go down as one against capitalism – and that too, by one of its most illustrious practitioners in India. This is, to say the least, unfortunate.

In such a climate of opinion, I was happy to read online an article by Ron Paul, Republican presidential candidate in the ongoing US elections, that is most refreshing – for Ron Paul argues for real capitalism, not this interventionist bullshit funded by fiat money:

"Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!

To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names — Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism."

I sincerely hope Arun Maira will read Ron Paul’s entire article – and maybe all his books too – and also root for real capitalism.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The Times of India, for some time now, has been arguing that the current inflationary spiral in India is caused by supply problems. They have repeated the argument again, in an editorial. Actually, the only cause of inflation is bad money. Inflation is a disease of the monetary system. There is only one cure: Sound Money.

15.04.2008 from Indian Current Affairsby ramkyc@gmail.com (Ramakrishna) Derivatives trading on commodity exchanges Time and again we are faced with this debate. Today’s debate in ET is a very good read. Recommend it strongly, in spite of our having covered the subject earlier in our blogs. Do so here. Some excerpts worth our noting:

It is incorrect to say that derivatives trading are fuelling price inflation. Futures trading provides vital clues to the state of demand-supply mismatches which was evident in case of wheat in 2006, tur in 2007 and even in this year in case of mustard, where lower output has been forecast by the government. Hence, futures trading mirrors economic fundamentals and if they are weak, the same will be reflected and one needs to address the fundamentals rather than the image.A ban on futures trading cannot hence change the fundamentals. We banned futures trading in wheat, urad, tur and rice last year. Prices of tur went up during the entire year due to a shortfall in production. Wheat prices reacted to global influences and continued to rise, and last week’s inflation data shows that rice prices have also gone up sharply. Hence, banning futures will simply remove a powerful signalling tool which can otherwise be used by the government to plan the supplies.Prices of fruits, vegetables, milk, coarse cereals, pulses like urad, tur and masoor, which are not traded on the exchanges have registered very high increases.Another example is edible oils. The hardening of edible oil prices is basically due to the rising crude price as well as due to the obsession of various countries with the production of biofuels. With crude holding above $110 more and more countries are willing to use their mustard, soya, maize, and palm oil for producing biofuels. This has led to extra demand for the food grains and edible oils, something that was not there before the advent commexes in India.So the government, instead of making a scapegoat of the commexes, should take concrete steps to help farmers grow more food. It should help them by developing infrastructure like irrigation canals and warehouses. India’s current warehousing capacity for farm produce stands at around one million tonnes — too little for accommodating the demands of farmers. Enhanced warehousing capacity will empower farmers and save them from distress sale, thus providing them with better incomes, which will only spur them to grow more food. We are currently witnessing the scenario in West Bengal where a bumper crop of potatoes has not resulted in bumper profits for the farmers, since the warehouses are already full and the farmers are forced to sell their produce at a ridiculously low price(Rs 150/quintal.) To sum up, the commexes don’t invent the price, they just help people discover it.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Economic systems are not ‘invented’ or 'created', least of all by a moral philosopher, talented as he was, who ‘did nothing, but observed everything’. Changes in a mode of subsistence are not ‘designed’, 'created', 'invented', or decided upon before hand. All attempts to do so are futile and doomed to failure, as we have seen recently in the communist attempts since 1917 and approaching their denoument in Cuba.

People from time to time design ‘perfect’ communities, little ‘utopias’, and better societies, and they all end in failure eventually, whether they are based around religious precepts – strict interpretations of religious doctrine (the Essenes), and mass conversions to supposedly divinely-inspired beliefs, - or around political and behaviour codes drafted by motivated ‘leaders’.

Some may last for the lifetimes of the ‘founders’, but most change as they drift away from the original aims and new generations are born and suffer from the drifting away of increasing percentages of their followers. In intensely combative ‘utopia’ movements of true ‘believers’, major schisms are normal (Stalin’s Purges and the Moscow Trials, or Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives, or Mao’s ‘Communes’).

The subsistence norm for hundreds of millennia was expressed in various forms of hunter-gathering, incorporating untold millennia of scavenging and pure gathering (Adam Smith’s ‘1st Age of Man’: see his Lectures On Jurisprudence and Wealth Of Nations). Nobody ‘invented’ or 'created' it; gathering was already of ancient vintage among primates and the hominids, and took local forms among the dispersed low population densities of each species.

Shepherding and Farming (the ‘2nd and 3rd Ages of Man’) appeared in parts of the world, leaving the rest in the 1st Age of subsistence, where a few thousand (hundreds?) remain still. Again nobody ‘invented’ these forms of subsistence. Where they were discovered, accidentally (‘some fell on stony ground’ but some didn’t), they emerged eventually, slowly and gradually, and by imitation from dispersals of small groups, including parallel practises and reversions, and when propelled by global events like the ending of the Ice Age.

Adam Smith saw the emergence (‘at last’) of Commerce (the ‘4th Age of Man’) as the main event in parts of the world (China, India, Europe), interrupted and subject to reversal (the Fall of 5th-century Rome) and re-appearance from the 15th century in Europe, accompanied by local politically motivated stagnation in China.

In this historical context, to acclaim Adam Smith as the ‘inventor’ of ‘Capitalism’, or indeed as the ‘conqueror’ of ‘Mercantile Political Economy’ (please: not ‘mercantilism’, a word he never used nor knew, it being first used in Germany in the 19th century), is plain daft.

We might note too that despite Adam Smith’s strictures (in Book IV and V of Wealth Of Nations) discrediting the futile and dangerous mercantile policies prevalent in his time, these were never totally removed and “the world still [uses] the economic system of ‘Mercantilism’. Indeed, the main instruments of Mercantile Political Economy remain in rude health in policies still pursued by numerous leading governments, US, EU, Asian, Russian and LA included) across the world, such as the protection of producers at the expense of consumers, balance of trade myths, suspicion of trading neighbours, tariffs, quotas, outright bans, acts of retaliation, sanctions, ‘wars’, and jealousies of trade, this latter, the title of an essay by David Hume in 1752 and still worth reading in 2008 (HERE).

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The free ride for American consumers is ending. For two generations, Americans have imported goods produced ever more cheaply from a succession of low-wage countries — first Japan and Korea, then China, and now increasingly places like Vietnam and India.But mounting inflation in the developing world, especially Asia, is threatening that arrangement, and not just in China, where rising energy and labor costs have already made exports to the United States more expensive, but in the lower-cost alternatives to China, too.“Inflation is the major threat to Asian countries,” said Jong-Wha Lee, the head of the Asian Development Bank’s office of regional economic integration.It is also a threat to Western consumers because Asian exporters, even in very poor countries, are passing their rising costs on to customers...

“Rising inflation is a way of life in China these days, you see it everywhere,” said Faye Kong, the company’s international business supervisor...In addition to the weak dollar, economists say that countries like Vietnam, Egypt, China and Brazil are inherently more vulnerable to inflation when, as now, rising prices are led by increasingly expensive commodities.

HOWE: The electric telegraph probably lowered the costs of business transactions even more than did the Internet, and it certainly seemed to contemporaries an even more dramatic innovation. For thousands of years messages had been limited by the speed with which messengers could travel and the distance eyes could see signals like flags or smoke. Neither Alexander the Great nor Benjamin Franklin (America’s first postmaster-general) knew anything faster than a galloping horse.

With the electric telegraph, instant long-distance communication became possible for the first time. Commercial application of Morse’s invention followed quickly. American farmers and planters — and most Americans then earned their living through agriculture — increasingly produced food and fibre for far-off markets. Their merchants and bankers welcomed the chance to get news of distant prices and credit. The newly invented railroads used the telegraph to schedule trains so they wouldn’t collide on the single tracks of the time.

The electric telegraph solved commercial problems and at the same time had huge political consequences. Along with improvements in printing, it facilitated an enormous growth of newspapers, which in turn facilitated the development of mass political parties. To sum up, then, the telegraph had many of the same effects in the 19th century that the Internet is having today: to speed up and enable commerce, to decouple communication from travel, to foster globalization, and to encourage democratic participation. The tsar of Russia worried about the democratic implications of the telegraph, just as the rulers of China worry now about the Internet.

Adam Smith wrote a good deal about wine. This was partly because he traveled in France and learned about wine markets first hand. But it was also a fact that Britain was for centuries a wine-drinking country, as John Nye’s fine book explains, just as it is so today, with a practical interest in wine market concerns.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Is the Auroville Foundation an autonomous body?- Carel ... For more is at stake than the freedom in financial matters. In question is the very freedom of Auroville's residents to develop Auroville independently, and not as per government directives. Comparisons were drawn with Shantiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's world university in West Bengal , which, according to many, has become paralysed due to over-regulation by the Government. Is Auroville doomed to the same fate?The Working Committee decided to obtain another legal opinion – not just from any lawyer, but from Shri Soli Sorabjee, former Attorney General of India and Senior Advocate to India 's Supreme Court, who ranks amongst India 's most eminent legal luminaries. Three questions were asked: is the Auroville Foundation an autonomous body or a government-controlled organisation? Is there any legal provision which makes it compulsory for the Secretary to be co-signatory to all cheques? And what is the position of the Residents' Assembly vis-a-vis the Governing Board?The legal opinion was long in the making. It arrived in January 2008. Its contents, however, were most enlightening...

Shri Sorabjee then examined the provisions of the Act itself, and concluded that the Auroville Foundation is not a government body but an independent juristic entity and that the provisions of the Act guarantee complete autonomy to the Foundation...

As can be expected, Aurovilians were pleased with Shri Sorabjee's unambiguous legal opinion. So was Shri Kireet Joshi, former Chairman of the Auroville Foundation, who, as Educational Advisor to the Government of India, had been responsible for drafting the Bill in 1987/8. In a letter to Shri Sorabjee, Kireet Joshi congratulated him for his brilliance in bringing out the intention behind the Act. “Your statement regarding the role that the Residents' Assembly is expected to play and the autonomy of the Foundation as a whole makes it very clear that the Auroville Foundation can never be described as a department of the government,” wrote Kireet. “The conclusion that you have drawn emphasizing the need for harmony among all the three authorities of the Foundation is impeccable.” Home > Journals & Media > Journals > Auroville Today > Auroville Foundation Current issueArchive copiesThe Auroville Experience

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Other States - Puducherry Shrine for Aurobindo in Puducherry soonStaff Reporter The Hindu Saturday, Apr 05, 2008 Site likely to be near beachPhoto: T. Singaravelou In memory of arrival: Children depicting Lord Krishna’s early life during the 98th anniversary celebrations of the arrival of Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry on Friday. —PUDUCHERRY:

The World Peace Trust, Pondicherry, will soon construct a shrine for Sri Aurobindo here. The site for the proposed shrine will be selected soon, managing trustee Dibyendu Goswami said on Friday.At the 98th anniversary celebrations of the arrival of Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry, he said the site for the shrine would preferably be near the beach.However, president of the trust and MLA K. Lakshminarayanan had suggested selection of a site at the entry of Puducherry at East Coast Road, he added.“The centenary celebrations of the arrival of Sri Aurobindo in Puducherry will be in 2010. We hope that next year, we will lay the foundation for the proposed shrine to be dedicated to Sri Aurobindo and complete it before the centenary celebrations,” he said. The shrine would be constructed with Auroville building technology, he said, adding that the tentative plan of the shrine has been prepared.“It is a design of ‘Prana Kuthi’ – abode of living in simplicity with artistic richness especially in rural Bengal. It is time we raised the huge fund required for the project.We are confident to dedicate the shrine to Sri Aurobindo as the Shrine of World Unity on April 4, 2010,” Mr. Goswami said. Sri Aurobindo arrived in Puducherry on April 4, 1910 at 4 p.m. Devotional songs and dances were held as part of the celebrations.Mr. Lakshminarayanan said the arrival of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had added flavour to Puducherry’s history.MLA S.P. Sivakumar and other members of the trust also spoke.

The country and its legends before 1947, had assured generations of hero worship and spawned hundreds of literary interpretations of the pre-Independence fireworks. However, while martyrs engaged our memories, the radical legal systems that had a penchant for sentencing revolutionaries to death remained synonymous to colonial atrocities. Khudiram Bose, merely 19, and Prafulla Chaki, another teenager, courted death in a way legends are made of. While their exploit was made of stuff least likely to dim on public memory, Bose’s conviction (Chaki shot himself before the Brits could nab him) occasioned a legal procedure unprecedented in its complexities in the history of British India. Noorul Hoda, a Jawaharlal Nehru University pass-out, was left spellbound by the enormity of the case and decided to entreat readers to a slice of his experience of digging out facts long relegated behind the glory of the martyrs in The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-Independence Trial.

“It was an exhibition organized at the Supreme Court in 2005 that incited my interest in pre-Independence trials. Among the documents exhibited at the exhibition were papers related to the Alipore Bomb Case of 1908. That is how I started on the book,” says Hoda. The case witnessed trials on 49 accused, saw 400 documents filed, and involved 5,000 exhibits. “The case had the most potent emotional difficulties with the judge who convicted Bose being a former classmate of another convict Sri Aurobindo Ghose,” says Hoda. The sheer extent of intellectual involvement was also mindboggling, recounts the author.

Hoda’s exploration took him to the National Archive and the Police Museum. “The most difficult part of the research was reading up all the original documents stored up in the police museum. Often the handwritten scripts were found to be illegible, and at other times, the English diction of the time seemed extremely unfamiliar. Add to them legal jargon,” explains Hoda. A part of his motive behind writing the book, which has the body of text interspersed with some rare photo plates, was to increase awareness about the museum in the ground floor of the Alipore District Court. “The rooms which saw the trials have been transformed in a museum with some rare documents and exhibits. But people are hardly aware of it,” rues Hoda.

While writing the book meant giving the neglected slice of history its due, the legal extremities that had the likes of Chittranjan Das up battling against it, would glaringly contrast the priorities and difficulties of two generations of the youth - pre-Independence and now. “When we see drug addicts, rash drivers of today and realise how the law is empathetic to their problems to some extent, it makes sense to recount how this freedom was achieved. And how youth, were sent to the gallows for even a minor offence,” says Hoda.

Friday, April 04, 2008

From the death of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 until the congressional elections of November 1966, liberals were triumphant, and what they did changed the world. Civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, clean air and clean water legislation, Head Start, the Job Corps and federal aid to schools had their roots in the liberal wave that began to ebb when Lyndon Johnson's Democrats suffered broad losses in the 1966 voting. The decline that 1966 signaled was sealed after April 4, 1968.

Liberals themselves share blame for the waning of their movement. Just because right-wing politicians used "law and order" as a code for race did not mean that concern about crime was illegitimate. On the contrary, the country was in the opening stages of a serious crime wave and had good reason to worry about rising violence...

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run for much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform...

For decades before the 1960s, conservatism was held in contempt by large swaths of the intellectual and political class. It was one of the great achievements of William F. Buckley Jr., whose death we mourned a few weeks ago, to insist that respect be paid to the great tradition whose cause he championed.

Now is the moment to put an end to our contempt for liberalism. There was business left unfinished on that fateful day in 1968, and it is time to take it up again.

Till fairly recently, both economic as well as political activity were the reserve of men. Thus, women had to depend on men for everything, and this led to subjugation. Fortunately, better days are here. The suffragettes fought for the vote and got it. Yet, despite 60 years of voting, millions of women in India remain backward and poor. The vote is obviously not enough. Some, like the socialist economist Amartya Sen and his protégé Manmohan Singh, say they need “education” – from the government. But prosperity is delivered by markets, and the government of India is scarcely a lamp of learning. Women must therefore think hard as to where their true interests lie. Only then can they campaign for the right policies.

It is not true that women did not “produce” or that they were “ignorant” in the centuries gone by. All over the world, women cooked delicious food, kept homes clean, and managed household budgets. In India, women produced pickles, papad, chutneys, butter, ghee and so many other wonderful things. Tribal women still produce alcoholic drinks like mahua, handia and apong. But all this was for “self-consumption”. These were not produced for “exchange”. If all these are produced for exchange in the market economy, it would become evident that women indeed possess a great deal of useful “knowledge” – even without formal education. They are not ignorant.

Thus, the first step towards the liberation of all women lies not in the vote, nor in “education”; rather, it lies in the freedom for all women to participate in the exchange economy of the market with whatever knowledge they may possess or choose to acquire. Indeed, pickles, papads and chutneys are very big businesses today. Street food is another. Entertainment is a multibillion dollar industry now and traditionally women have always been proficient in music and dance. Rather than the vote, which is “political freedom”, or government education, which can seriously damage the mind, women today should strive for the Liberty to engage in economic activity, which is Economic Freedom. This is a term not found in the lexicon of the socialists.

At the outset, let it be clearly understood that Gandhi got it all wrong. His ideal of “village self-sufficiency” means economic suicide for both rural men and women; but more so for women, because if their men are poor, women are poorer still. Self-sufficiency is production for use; capitalism is production for exchange. If rural women produce surpluses for exchange, they will discover that the markets in which they can find sufficient customers are invariably located in cities and towns. Stuck in a sparsely-populated village, a woman might sell two jars of pickles. But if she took her output to a crowded city, she might sell a hundred kilos of the stuff. Thus, villages, self-sufficiency and “rural development” must be ditched in favour of urbanization: hundreds of free trading cities and thousands of such towns, instead of millions of self-sufficient village economies. Women must produce for exchange in urban market centres. This is my Lesson # 1.

On to Lesson # 2: As far as politics and government are concerned, what these must be able to provide women is Liberty Under Law. Nothing else – no “sops”, no “reservations”. There must not be any politically imposed restrictions placed upon women (or men) when they go to the urban markets. It is here that we find the critical problem that many, many women face in our cities: that the Law does not give them Liberty; rather, the Law is an instrument of coercion. This applies not only to women street vendors and petty traders, but also to women performing artistes, right through to women working in professions like tending bars and serving food and drink. Indeed, although we in India have a huge film industry, we do not possess a “nightlife” industry – where lakhs of women could find gainful employment. There isn’t a Moulin Rouge in any Indian city. Nor are there any casinos. Even bars are strictly licensed, and entertainers are discouraged by the “entertainment tax”. These are areas where women are usually employed en masse, at least in the western world. In our own land, the nautch-girl was a fixture of the Mughal court; she was there in every city; even the British were entertained by her; but our modern-day democracy has thrown her out – and this is repression via legislation. So my Lesson # 2 reads: Fight for Economic Freedom – the liberty to engage in consensual capitalistic exchanges that hurt neither buyer nor seller.

Now, the difference between primitive “production for self-consumption” and capitalistic “production for exchange” is that the latter requires Capital as “investment”. With capitalism, we have “roundabout methods of satisfying wants”. For example, till fairly recently, all yoghurt produced in India was in the home, consumed inside the home itself. Today, we have big companies producing yoghurt. Instead of a woman milking her cow and preparing the yoghurt – which is “direct satisfaction” – we now have the “roundabout” method of companies buying humungous amounts of milk from lakhs of cattle-owners, transporting them to distant factories in big trucks, making tonnes of yoghurt and packaging it, transporting these to shops, advertising these offerings, etc. This “roundabout” method is Capitalism – and this requires capital to invest. My third lesson is on how women can save the capital necessary to invest in capitalistic enterprise.

At the basic level, we save if we spend less than we earn – and this is something every intelligent woman understands full well. (Though Lord Keynes didn’t: but that’s another story.) But there are two factors that erode our savings: taxes and inflation. It is in the interest of all women to campaign for lower taxes (so oppose Manmohan Singh’s “education tax”) and for an inflation-free currency. Inflation is a hidden tax. As the value of the currency falls, so does the value of one’s savings. The gainer is the borrower who takes a loan today and pays back many years later when the money has lost much of its value. The government also gains. Thus, women should understand inflationism and oppose it: Low taxes, balanced government budgets, sound money – these are policies that will allow millions of women to save and invest, and engage in Capitalism. Whenever a finance minister announces a “budget deficit” or another populist giveaway, all Indian women should cry “Foul!” This is my Lesson # 3.

Fourth: Capitalism is based entirely on private property (socialism exalts “collective property” – like the steel plants Nehru built). The unwritten law of any market is that the goods arrayed before a vendor belong to the vendor. If we want some of them, we must strike a bargain and make the exchange, whereupon the ownership rights are reversed. Now, imagine what would happen in the market if the Law said that bread belonged to all, and all were free to consume it: communism. The result would be there would be no bread offered for sale in any market. There would be wheat, flour, chappatis – but no bread. The “natural law” of private property cannot be dispensed with without causing immense economic dislocation.

What properties do women need? Women are homemakers: they need homes. Homes are the most essential private properties. Since all cannot afford to buy them, they rent. But what happens if the Law says that the actual owner of the house cannot raise his rents to market levels and cannot evict tenants who refuse to pay what he demands? As in the case of “collective bread” above, the result would be that rental housing would not be offered on the market. Prospective tenants would not find rental housing. They would have to stay in slums. This is what is happening in every Indian city today. Yet, every bai in Mumbai would have decent rooms on rent if all legislation on “rent control” was repealed. Slums would disappear. I hope my readers will now instruct their bais to take to the streets in opposition to rent control. This is my Lesson # 4.

Finally, what good is the money earned if there is nothing much to buy with it? – as in our socialist heydays. Women are great shoppers. They love shopping. And they have the nose for the best deals. What good can these excellent noses do if foreign products are left out? Free trade is in the interest of all shoppers – so that they can purchase, with their hard-earned wealth, the best goods the world has to offer. So campaign for free trade as an essential component of Economic Freedom – the freedom to engage in consensual capitalistic exchanges with foreigners. This is my Lesson # 5.

Free trade, sound money, private property, liberty under law, production for exchange in urban markets and the consequent rapid urbanization of India – it is with these that all women can prosper. When they do so, men will gain too, because there is a law in Economics that says: When any good is sold it creates the demand for all non-competing goods and services. Thus, when a woman sells a tonne of papad, she will possess the means to buy a good car – manufactured by male engineers. And even we men will prosper.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectual, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy, The God That Failed

James Madison was not a democrat. He denounced popular rule as "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." Democracy, he observed, must be confined to a "small spot" (like Athens). Indeed, the Bush administration's deafening demagoguery notwithstanding, democratic majoritarianism is thoroughly un-American.Madison and the other Founders attempted to forestall democracy by devising a republic, the hallmark of which was the preservation of individual liberty. To that end, they restricted the federal government to a handful of enumerated powers. Decentralization, devolution of authority, and the restrictions on government imposed by a Bill of Rights were to ensure that few issues were left to the adjudication of a national majority.The essence of democracy, instantiated so perfectly in Bush's neoconservative administration, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "general will," a "national purpose" that ought to be implemented by an all-powerful state. Voltaire, a rather cleverer Frenchman, said that Rousseau is as to the philosopher as the ape is to man. Still, that ape's idea animated the blood-drenched French and Russian revolutions. And sadly, it wafted over the Atlantic, took root in the republic's soil, and flourished like kudzu.Over time, this foreign weed began to choke the Founder's Republic. As Felix Morley observed in Freedom and Federalism, earlier Americans were undeniably influenced by Rousseau, harboring a considerable admiration for the manner in which the common democratic will found expression in revolutionary France. The later infestation of Marxist ideas completed Rousseau's work...

Good democracy is said to be commensurate with class, wealth, and occupational convergence. The Norwegian scholars lament that less-than-perfect democracy has been achieved in Norwegian private life, where women and minorities have failed to achieve aggregate economic parity. Although when it comes to their presence in education, political life, and public-sector employment, politically imposed affirmative action and quotas have done the trick. In other words, democracy is optimized in spheres where the state is most active. Since natural inequalities are part of the human condition, egalitarianism requires concerted acts of government force. Democratic social structure is a product of the systematic use of political power. In as much as democracy's aim is the achievement of equality, it is inimical to liberty.So we see that the road to serfdom — in both Norway and America — is no coincidental detour, but rather a well-charted destiny. As Hans-Herman Hoppe has observed, the failure of democracy is rooted in its very nature. Coercive majoritarianism, nominal ownership of property, a highly centralized and authoritarian state with ever-expanding distributive and other powers, over whose decisions "The People" exert little control — these have inevitable consequences.The Founding Fathers warned against this. But instead of Madison, we chose to follow that ape, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.Ilana Mercer is a columnist for WorldNetDaily.com and author of Broad Sides: One Woman's Clash With A Corrupt Culture. For more about her work, please visit www.ilanamercer.com. Write to her. Post comments on the blog.You can receive the Mises Daily Article in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

In human terms, how are we to describe… our own Western civilization, or any other of the 10 or 20 civilizations which we can count up on our fingers? In human terms, I should say that each of these civilizations is, while in action, a distinctive attempt at a single great common human experience, or, when it is seen in retrospect, after the action is over, it is a distinctive instance of a single great common human experience. The enterprise or experience is an effort to perform an act of creation. In each of these civilizations, mankind, I think, is trying to rise above mere humanity — above primitive humanity, that is, — toward some higher kind of spiritual life. One cannot depict the goal because it has never been reached, — or, rather, I should say that it has never been reached by any human society. It has, perhaps, been reached by individual men and women. At least, I can think of certain saints and sages….

But if there have been a few transfigured men and women, there has never been such a thing as a civilized society. Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. No known civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet. There has never been a communion of saints on earth. In the least uncivilized society at its least uncivilized moment, the vast majority of its members have remained very near indeed to the primitive human level. And no society has ever been secure of holding such ground as it has managed to gain in its spiritual advance. Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial

“The coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital, and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity, and attempt to effect it in themselves and lead others to it and to make it the recognized goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the extent to which they carry their evolution, the yet unrealized potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future.” – Sri Aurobindo

Nothing could be better for the country than cancelling the 2008 election. Leave the office of the presidency empty.I can see only one possible justification for having a president of the United States: to preside over the dismantling of the federal government. If you think this is a radical idea, think again. This is, in part, what people have long voted for, even if they never actually get it. I can hardly remember a time when a president has been elected who didn't promise to get the government off our backs.In one way, this agenda makes no sense, of course. You don't hire a CEO to drive a company into bankruptcy. You don't appoint a pastor to shrink a congregation. Why should we expect a president to dismantle the thing that gives him power and fame, and his allies huge wealth? Well, realistically, you can't. But it's the best hope we have within the framework of conventional politics.The irony is that most presidents get elected on the prospect that they will curb power. It's true of George Bush, who promised domestic cuts and a humble foreign policy. Clinton was also elected on the promise of middle-class tax cuts. We can go back and back and see it was true for the first Bush, for Reagan, for Carter, for Nixon, and so on.For that matter, FDR himself denounced government spending during this first campaign. "I accuse the present administration [Hoover's] of being the greatest spending administration in peace times in all our history," and added, "On my part, I ask you very simply to assign to me the task of reducing the annual operating expenses of your national government." He further denounced the government for "fostering regimentation without stint or limit."It was even true with George Washington, who had made innumerable speeches on the evil of tyranny only to take power and use it to the benefit of the powerful. Even Jefferson succumbed with his mistaken Louisiana Purchase, though he later entertained the possibility of a salutary breakup of the United States.And so on it goes. And it will happen again, despite all promises.Folks, there is something wrong with this model of governance, not just current policy but the whole structure. We might even argue that the error goes back to the Constitution, a document that created new government powers unprecedented in Colonial history, and put the government in charge of restraining itself. It set up competitive divisions within government under the presumption that they would keep each other in check. Instead, they cooperated toward mutual expansion, especially after the federal power seizure called the Civil War.Part of the problem dates to a core error within liberal theory: the belief that it was possible to create a government that was an extension of society, thanks to the relentless input of the people via democratic institutions. What this model did instead is enlist the public as part of their own destruction. And it created confusion about who precisely is to blame when things don't work out. Under democracy, aren't we the government? Aren’t we doing this to ourselves?Let's draw on another aspect of old-time liberal theory as a means of finding a way out of this mess. There are two additional contributions that liberalism made. It taught that society is capable of self-management, and that government is not the reason for order in society. Summing up the old liberal position, Thomas Paine said:

A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society, and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has in man and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their laws; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything that is ascribed to government.

If we would be true to this line of thought, we should propose the unthinkable: cancel the election. This has never before been so urgent. Neither party will cut government in a way that is desperately needed. Instead, they offer a left- or right-tinged Americanized socialism or fascism. One promises domestic expansion and foreign reduction; the other promises foreign expansion and domestic reduction. The inevitable compromise: expand both domestically and internationally.In addition, whatever the new president does will make our growing economic problems worse. The economic interventions they propose will add to our troubles, whether that means expanding inflation, taxes, controls, or debt. Another war is unthinkable, but probably inevitable. You can already detect it in the aggressive trajectory towards Iran. More business regulation can only dampen the fires of free enterprise, which are our saving grace today.The best solution would be a government that would destroy itself. The second best solution would be a government that does nothing at all – then, at least, matters will not get worse. This is what canceling the election would do. It would introduce enough confusion and chaos to keep government from acting either domestically or internationally, which would be a wonderful thing.There is also the matter of public will. We pretend as if the person who is elected enjoys the support of a majority. Nonsense. Most people who can vote do not vote, and who can blame them? Those who do vote are most likely voting against the other guy and not for a positive program. The person elected will enjoy a mandate of perhaps 5–10% of the population that actively supports the agenda. I say: make the new president their president but not our president.It's true that what I'm proposing constitutes a purely negative agenda. So let's look to a positive goal. This country is too large to be governed from the center. It is long past time that it be broken into ever smaller pieces, even to the size of the world's smallest nations. In that way, the US government will cease to be a menace to its citizens and to the world. Prosperity will be assured in the same way it always has: through peace and free trade with all.But what about the Constitution? Let Jefferson speak: "We have not yet so far perfected our constitutions as to venture to make them unchangeable…. But can they be made unchangeable?... I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to person, not to things."It is highly significant that Jefferson, when he wrote his own epitaph, wanted to be remembered for the Declaration of Independence, for the Virginia statute on religious freedom, and for founding the University of Virginia. That he was a two-term president is not listed. __________ Llewlleyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president and founder of the Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com. Rockwell@mises.org. Comment on the Blog.You can receive the Mises Daily Article in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

Director, Savitri Era Learning Forum SRA-102-C, Shipra Riviera, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad - 201014 (UP) India + 91 96500-65636
tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com
Aadhaar No. 3628 2075 7337 SELF posits a model of counselling and communicative action as an instrument in order to stimulate the public sphere. The model aims at supplementing the individual’s struggle for a successful social adjustment with more aspirational inputs so as to help one take an informed and balanced attitude towards life as well as society. Savitri Era of those who adore, Om Sri Aurobindo & The Mother.

Let us rationally believe that social events do not happen suddenly like an earthquake. Those begin to crop from the seeds sown. I praise your efforts; at least the new generation may get opportunity to understand perspectives of events and social equations. -- Rabi Kanungo (Intellectual Forum)***

Some things are sufficiently constant in human affairs - and self-interest, even greed, is among them - that they explain nothing."Greed" certainly can be unleashed to do harm, but it can also be harnessed to do good. -- Donald J. Boudreaux "Greed" Is Not an Explanation from Cafe Hayek***

The fact is that the relationships each of us has with our fellow citizens overwhelmingly are of the arm’s-length, impersonal variety. They are market relationships, governed chiefly by self-interest on both sides of each exchange. They are not the sorts of personal relationships that guide decisions made within households. They are, indeed, precisely the sorts of relationships that each of us has with strangers from foreign countries. The Nation Is Not a House from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux***

Adam Smith never said anything like: ‘the common good emerges when everybody works for their own selfish interest’... In fact, Smith never spoke favourably of selfishness. Richard confuses him with Ayn Rand (1960s) or even Bernard Mandeville (1734). They both lauded selfishness (Rand by making it a virtue and Mandeville by making it a social compulsion – ‘private vice, public benefits’). But not Adam Smith; he called Mandeville's theory 'licentious'. -- Friends Like Richard Are No Help At All from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Adam Smith never endorsed a policy of, or the behaviour of, greed. That is to confuse Adam Smith with Bernard Mandeville, author of the Fable of the Bees, 1734 (written over the years 1704 to 1737), who made greed a private vice but a public good. Folly Of Relying on Poor Teaching from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

I am familiar with the works of Adam Smith and know something about his use of the metaphor of ‘an invisible hand’, which he used once in 1759 in The Theory of Moral Sentiments at TMS IV.1.10: p 184, and once in 1776 in Wealth Of Nations (short-title) at: Book IV.ii.9: page 456. He also, for the record referred to ‘the invisible hand of Jupiter’ in an essay, unpublished in his lifetime, known by its short-title as History of Astronomy, when he described the ‘pusillanimous superstition’ in pagan societies. In none of these cases was his use of an invisible hand metaphor anything to do with how simple price markets work. Indeed, the operation of market choice is so simple that your charming six-year-old daughter can understand how they work. -- from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy